Years ago I encountered a classic sausage from a bit north of Paris, the Andouillettes d’Amiens. In its commercial form, it’s made much like a traditional sausage, stuffed into a casing, and has an interesting mix of both ground and coarsely chopped pork, giving a unique texture. Home cooks often make the same sausage sans casing, resulting in a somewhat loose sausage, that, at least based on a whole lot of internet photos, tends to fall apart a lot. A couple of people suggested it holds together better when made short and fat, basically, a meatball. I made them a couple of times for Casa SaltShaker dinners and people loved them – served up over mashed potatoes and topped with the oniony broth that they are cooked in. For a recent delivery offering (we’ve suspended doing that, other than our breads – we were losing money virtually every week, which, obviously, was not what we planned for – I’m now doing almost entirely online cooking classes and wine tastings), I went a slightly different route, offering them up paired with homemade orzo pasta, and turning the onion broth into a creamy gravy.

I’m making 48 meatballs here, you could easily cut this recipe in half and have it work just fine. 2.4kg ground pork shoulder, 150gm diced smoked bacon, 3 eggs, 240g fresh breadcrumbs, 6 cloves minced garlic, 180g chopped parsley, 1Tb salt, and the spice mix below.

Spice mix: 1t rosemary, 1t basil, 1t bay leaf, ½t clove, 1/6t nutmeg, 1/3t white pepper, 1t thyme, 1/6t allspice, 1t mace, 2/3t hot paprika, 2/3T cinnamon

You’ll also need: 300g finely chopped onions, 120g lard, 120g flour, 1.5lt hot pork broth, 1 cup sour cream, salt and pepper

Moisten the breadcrumbs with a few tablespoons of the hot pork broth, then mix the two meats, the eggs, the breadcrumbs, garlic, parsley, salt, and spices together. Work them just enough to get them to hold together well and then form into meatballs about the size of a ping-pong ball.

Brown them in the lard. With this quantity I had to do them in batches. When I make smaller amounts, I’ll use my big cast iron pan which can hold 24 of them, and then I just keep cooking in the same pan from start to finish. Here, after browning them…

…I transferred them to baking pans.

In the same fat that I’ve browned the meatballs in, I cook the onions until soft and translucent. Normally I’d do that in and around the meatballs after browning them, here I did it separately. Add the hot pork stock, deglazing the pan. Adjust the seasoning if needed with some salt and pepper, and then, in this case, pour the whole thing over the meatballs.

And, ready to pop in the oven and cook for about 30 minutes. Since I’d decided to make this a creamy gravy, I moved the meatballs into the containers we were going to deliver them in, then I poured all the liquid and onions back into the pot I’d browned things in to start with, brought to a simmer, reduced it, and then finished it with the sour cream and some of the pasta water to thicken it. Some of that got tossed with the pasta, and the rest ladled over the meatballs.

The pasta, a half and half mix of semolina and all purpose flour, with eggs. Mixed, rested, and rolled out into logs, and then flattened the logs. Roughly, the logs end up about 3/4″ the long dimension and under 1/4″ the short one. With a sharp knife, cut thin slices.

Boil them up in salted water, using some of the pasta water to help thicken the sauce, then tossed the pasta with enough of the sauce to coat it. Again, I did this in a couple of batches, for making eight large servings, it was too much to cook all at once.

And, voilà! The finished “plates” left to cool down, wrapped, chilled, and sent out to customers!